


remember how lovely we were。

by aesterismo



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesterismo/pseuds/aesterismo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In retrospect, in memory of, and from one life to the next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember how lovely we were。

 

The first thing Isana Yashiro recalls before his eyes open is someone calling his name.

Someone distant.  Indistinct, too, as though the lilting tones slip through a medium. 

He feels the sound, nostalgic, opens his mouth to receive it, return it in earnest, the flat of his tongue already curled to reply. 

It's a muted, subdued kind of intonation that echoes in his ears when he comes to, filtering the rush of warm wind sweeping by his cheeks as he reaches back into his unconscious for the source of it. 

A melody that starts almost inaudible, rising into a patient introlude, guiding and easing him back,

it move, like quicksilver, onto the wings of a mezzo-forte transition, notes diving from

qu ar te r,

hal ves,

e i g h t h s ,

 

and then,

once more,

that voice returns to the forefront of his swarming mind.

 

_(good) bye!_

* * *

 

and then, only then, when a dissonant crescendo of sunbeams and skyline lights flash before his closing eyelids in red and gold and blue, he knows that he's **falling** , falling down below, rising up above, resonating in all different directions, slowly fading to become an eerie and ethereal color. 

how else can one describe it

other than in a single

word?

  


* * *

 

_'silver,'_

the blade that rests between his heart and his head whispers;

_that is the answer you seek._

* * *

 

When Shiro awakens, the silence greets him.

Taking naps on the rooftops are the best way to spend the lunch break, he thinks, the afternoon autumn air smooth and crisp in its languid drift over his face. 

Refreshed, he stretches his arms above his head and glances at the stray kitten he found. 

When he sees the tiny presence hasn't left the folds of his uniform jacket and seems rather content to sleep the day away atop his rising and falling chest, Shiro smiles.  It must be nice, he thinks, to not be lonely or wonder what the future holds. 

Like a carefree, curious, childlike cat, curled up in the arms of a makeshift master who would protect them from harm.  What an uncomplicated existence that would be. 

Uncomplicated. 

Uneventful. 

Unwanted? 

Perhaps, Shiro thinks, laughing as he closes his eyes to catch another forty winks.  But then again, perhaps only a cat understands a cat's existence. 

Just as a human understands and acknowledges another human's existence.

 

* * *

_won't someone carry my spirit somewhere else,_

asks the whimsical creature who throws caution to the wind,

_to a colorless world just for me?  
_

 

* * *

 

No one sweeps Shiro off his feet, literally and figuratively, quite like Yatogami Kuro.

It takes an instant, a single moment in time, and Shiro can sense a change within him.  More than ever, he feels like a flame caught lying in the wake of an impending sea storm and the start of a forthcoming sandstorm. 

He finds himself caught - hook, line, and sinker - by the graceful pull of a walking enigma of a young man who pulls him by the sleeve and carries him like a sack of rice over the crook of his sword arm claiming that he's been sent to kill him one day and cooking a three-course meal for him and Neko the next.

His ordinary life isn't quite so ordinary anymore. 

The twists and turns, the conspiracies and the daily chase scenes better suited to a weeknight sitcom or romcom TV drama: they're all as much a part of his budding high school memories as the shape of the classroom lecture halls and the occasional names he catches from his schoolmates' repeated self-introductions (Kukuri, Mishima, Sumika; he'll remember them, he's sure of that much, no matter how many years pass, no matter what events transpire in the days to follow). 

But however nonsensical, foolish, or unremarkable they may appear, they're a part of his life now. 

Neko, arching back against the pillows of his bed in her new and decidedly human skin, rose-tinged tresses and svelte form alight with an otherworldly glow. 

Kuro, apron straps and slender shoulders facing them while he stands over the counter with his perpetual and persistent frown, messy ponytail and stern cadence as unconvincing as his mission statement.

Just as Neko forces her way into Shiro's dormitory, pawing at her owner until he relinquishes the bed to his anthropomorphized pet's free reign, Kuro settles into the new routines of Shiro's (now not-so-)ordinary life and refuses to leave. 

 

* * *

 

His dormitory is livelier these days, more than it's ever been. 

It's a change he welcomes with open arms, even at night when everything's settled down.  He welcomes this too, the quiet after another busy day, because it settles the war taking place in his own heart as well.

He looks from Neko's leg hanging off the bedframe to Kuro's serene expression facing him - and Shiro realizes, cheek against worn-in futons and shared pillows, why he never felt at ease in this place before. 

Spaces once vacant now filled. 

Lonely silences now occupied.

Long days, shorter nights.  Sometimes the other way around.

Shiro settles down against the covers, inhales while Kuro and Neko exhales; he dreams, for the first time in as far back as he can remember, of a slow ascent to the stars.

 

* * *

 

A dream isn't a premonition, he tells Kuro, when the other boy asks of his nightly visions.  It's simple psychology.  

A dream, he tells Kuro, is a reflection of what we desire most in life. 

What we cannot do in reality. 

What we want to say in person to those here and gone. 

Who we want to be or who we want to become. 

Where we see ourselves in the future, whether it may take us. 

Why we feel happy or why we shed tears when we awaken. 

Whether we remember a dream (or nightmare) after our eyes open.

But he never tells Kuro the reason why some mornings he wakes with a certain sadness in the empty space between his outstretched arm and where the ceiling meets the sky.

Nor does he tell Kuro why why his mouth hangs open sometimes when he wakes, as if he were saying something in that forgotten dream.

Nor does he understand why he dreams, some nights, of Kuro holding him close in the wake of a war-wrought battlefield, lemongrass and gentle reassurance, the remnants of ash-tinged snowflakes falling around them and the scorched earth burning his bare feet.

(He thinks he understands, though, why he lets the time stretch on the next morning after these dreams to lie facefirst in the pillows pretending to be asleep still while he waits for the tears to abate.  Why he clutches the pillows around him like he couldn't hold onto Kuro in that dream, not when his shoulders and hands trembled so much he felt asphyxiated upon waking. 

Why he was so afraid in the dream-- no, _terrified --_ of letting go.)

 

* * *

 

But happiness never lasts for long.

Sooner or later, Shiro convinces himself, the illusion would fade off and slip away entirely.

He tells himself so in earnest - fights to recall the fragmented fear-stricken moments before Neko and Kuro came to live with him, like a hazy dream sequence out of order by the morning after.

He tells himself so out of desperation - lowers his head and scrubs at the stains on his uniform, the redred _red_ rushing to his head, clinging to the white fabric of once clean fabric and things that don't belong.

He tells himself so as a prayer - a reminder for every instance Neko's wide eyes and Kuro's small smiles draw out a surge of warmth he tucks away for later, much later, when he needs a reminder of who he was (whoever he was before this) and an anchor to hold him down to this existence.

He feels less like the light of a rebellious flame and more the kindling, the start of a slow unraveling of particles and entwined hands, the end of which he can only imagine in distant possibilities. 

 

Returning to the dorm, the home away from home they were forced to leave behind. 

 

Returning to ignorance, a terrible bliss without cognizance they long entertained. 

 

Returning to (an idle hope, really) a time when the reflection of his face in the lakeside didn't leave him wondering about the stranger staring back at him - tired eyes, borrowed uniform, detached and anxious despite the companions at his side who've never left.

 

 

* * *

 

The kindling which transitions them to a formless, less colorful world -

he struggles to become worthy of such prestige

to truly deserve their kindness and loyalty.

 

* * *

 

He knows Kuro thinks himself unworthy, too.

Shiro knows.  He thinks they might be alike in this regard.  Two opposing forces on the same side. 

If it had been different-- no, Shiro finds his thoughts wavering, if _they_ had been different people, they wouldn't have made it this far.

Standing beneath nebulous cloud cover that shrouds their sheepish smiles, a fair distance from one another but closer than ever before.

Locking hesitant gazes when the blue coats arrive, Neko's claws clutching at his forearm and Kuro's sage nod as he shifts into a combative position (more seasoned knight than rouge vigilante, sheath and sword as effective weapons as his sharp wit and tongue), hesitating halfway down the corridor when he thinks of the countless possibilities. 

His dreams: invariable as they've become, they're inseparable, now, from the stark contrast of his current reality.

His memories: they remain scattered litanies of fragmented moments, carried deep within; the past, the present, each treasured in equal amounts.   


His greatest desire: to be wanted, to be needed, by someone who needs him just as much. 

His greatest fear: solitude, a separation before his truncated life's due course.

Kuro may indeed be unworthy, Shiro thinks, of the troubles this life he's chosen to lead bring him.

But he will never be unworthy of Shiro's decision to stand at his side - not now, not ever.

 

* * *

 

(why _do you run,_  


the tremble to his fingertips as they graze Kuro's slumbering visage taunts,

_from the one thing that you've wanted to chase after all this time?_

 

  
_because fear makes people abandon their chase,_   


the silence between them in that shared hotel bed reverberates,

  
_but love makes people run right back to their fears again._ )

 

* * *

 

The night before they part, Shiro dreams of disappearing into a brilliant streak of snowfall at dusk.

 

Kuro searches for any trace of him in the fading daylight, Neko reaching out to each drifting flake until they melt into her open hands.  They're afraid, from his omniscient dreamer's viewpoint, as they grasp at the frigid air and seize **light** , filtering in bands across the space between sky and earth, swathed along with the weary soldiers and fallen commanders in a blistering heat before they all dissolve into ash. 

 

Shiro, trapped in a glass cage of eclipsed sunset behind where his two charges stand, calls out to them again and again, to no avail. 

 

He slips out of their camping ground to stand by the waterfront like any other night he cannot fall back asleep, staring out at the distant city lights from beneath the underpass. 

 

He counts every luminous starlight that strains with all its energy to make its presence known.   He recounts the things he's lost and the things he still stands to gain. 

 

He finds he's no longer startled by the arms that come to rest behind him, guiding him back by the waist to lean against the taller boy, lemongrass and gentle reassurance in light of such troubled times.

 

Quiet company in the face of such troubling thoughts, such unsettling visions, he could ever refuse.

 

"Kuro," exhales the Silver King - when he feels their pulses align, when their cheek brush, "if I disappeared, what would you do?"

 

"Isn't it better," chides his charge with a twinge of melancholy, "to worry about that if it happens?"

 

A complacent hush answers Kuro's rejoinder.  They shift only when Shiro beckons for him to lie back in the grass beside him.  One arm laid over his stomach, the other outlining the grooves of calluses on his charge's sword hand, Kuro still does not stir or move away. 

 

At Shiro's command, he would, gladly.  But not tonight. 

 

"If you disappeared," Shiro forces himself to laugh, thinking it must be the nearness of their aching bones, the meeting of tired eyes, that makes his vision swim under the stars, "I'd sooner disappear with you, Kuro.  A world without you or Neko seems awfully empty."

 

The temperature of Kuro's hand against his temple surprises him, a chilling warmth that draws him closer, leads him to an epiphanies that overtake him. 

 

The rounds of sudden laughter, the infallible lightheartedness Neko's antics inspire and Kuro's peacemaking attempts elicit. 

 

The connection of memories melding into one another, the pieces aligned after such a sudden (re)awakening at long last.

 

The recognition that fear is only temporary, that loneliness is only a state of being - that what ought to rule the heart is none of these things.

 

"I won't go anywhere, then."  It's the sureness, the naivety of such words, that compels him, more like any ocean tide or anchor wound at his ankles ever would.  "If you ever disappear, I'll be right where you left me when you return."

 

(It never leaves him, the memory of that kiss, the sadness that came with the realization that it could be their last.)

 

* * *

 

What moves him, pulls him closer that night before he leaves him, is not the slight tug at his collar nor the nudge of bare toes grazing his calves nor the smooth sweep of the dark-haired boy's lips from chin down to clavicle.

 

It's the knowledge that with his hands, _his_ hands, he has the power to bring someone waiting to be led to their knees or bring someone able to lead to stand up again.

 

It's this knowledge - the earnest hope - that keeps the tears at bay when he shuts his eyes in dreamless sleep for the sake of a better world, a better him, in the next life.

 


End file.
